Tuesday, May 21, 2013 marked the 66th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, where 194 Member States attended the annual meeting to discuss activities of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and set targets for the coming year. Amongst key issues on the table were women and children’s health, which was specifically noted as a key challenge at last year’s meeting.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013 marked the 66th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, where 194 Member States attended the annual meeting to discuss activities of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and set targets for the coming year. Amongst key issues on the table were women and children’s health, which was specifically noted as a key challenge at last year’s meeting. In her opening address, WHO Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, assured member states that efforts to reach health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) had accelerated, particularly in relation to MDGs 4 and 5 which aim to reduce child mortality rates and improve maternal health. Dr Chan said: “This is especially true for women’s and children’s health, and this is especially encouraging. Accelerating efforts to reach these two goals means accelerating efforts to overcome some very long-standing barriers to service delivery.” In Ghana, the risks associated with childbirth present a grave reality for pregnant women. By 2000, 500 of every 100,000 mothers in Ghana were dying annually during childbirth. This number however, diminished to 350 by 2008, but when compared to the UK where only 12 out of 100,000 women die during childbirth, Ghana has a long way to come. And while the number of mothers dying during childbirth has reduced, a staggering 22,900 babies still die in Ghana each year, a statistic action programmes such as the Free Maternal Healthcare Initiative are fighting to reduce. One such action programme is E4A-MamaYe. Initiated by Evidence for Action, MamaYe spans across five Sub-Saharan countries, including Ghana, and is tackling the issues surrounding child and maternal health head-on. The initiative aims to ensure the health and safety of mothers and their babies, the focus being on newborn and antenatal care. In particular, E4A-MamaYe Ghana focuses on arming communities with information, empowering women in particular to hold policy makers to account. The campaign is also aimed at demanding improvement in delivery of health services, a lack of which Dr Chan indentified as a long-standing barrier to women’s and children’s health.Citing the results of a study conducted by the Rockefeller Foundation, Dr Chan commended member states for being “on the right track” in encompassing factors that contribute to good health at a low cost. According to Dr. Chan, the study indicated that factors that promote good health include, “a commitment to equity, effective governance systems, and context-specific programmes that address the wider social and environmental determinants of health,” adding “an ability to innovate is also important.”Dr. Chan also explained that many more countries were prioritising the education and training of healthcare workers so as to improve access to skilled healthcare service providers. Since its launch in February 2013, the E4A-MamaYe initiative has made all these factors a top priority with the implementation of simultaneous evidence-driven activities to combat maternal and child mortality. In the past three months, these activities have included:
- Strategies aimed at educating health-care workers about care before, during and after birth
- EmONC dissemination in Ashanti, Greater Accra, Upper West and Volta regions
- Discussions highlighting shortfalls in government policies, such as lack of skilled midwives;
- Improvement in service delivery to rural parts of Ghana, such as obstetrics equipment, skilled birth attendants and the establishment of community-based health planning services clinics in areas lacking such services.
- Public engagements through the use of digital media platforms